British show jumping: hyping up the horseplay

Titillating photo shoots, tight shirts, pop music - show jumping, once the bastion of elegant British sportsmanship, has been seriously sexed up. Jessica Fellowes reports

Sex and horses. Ever since the time of Catherine the Great, they've gone together like strawberries and cream. For the past few decades, it's been Jilly Cooper's novels, with posh men called Rupert wielding riding crops and seducing châtelaines, that have cemented the pairing.

But the sexual allure of the horsey world was always just a subtle subtext, not a brash statement - until now.

This weekend sees the Barclays Wealth British Masters Invitational show jumping competition at Chester Racecourse.

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Show jumping, that bastion of elegant sportsmanship, has been sexed up. Perhaps it was inevitable. Posh events such as Ascot or Henley survive only because they are financed by corporate sponsorship and hospitality. That means each suffers a greater pressure to be a commercial success. And we all know what sells best, even in a downtrodden economic climate - sex.

"Some people are absolutely disgusted," says Lucy Higginson, editor of Horse & Hound. "Others think, well, it's got the sport into the national press, so it's a good thing." Personally, she tends towards the latter view. "There are lots of good-looking girls in show jumping, so why not have a bit of Jilly Cooper in there?"

But the sexing up doesn't stop with the photographs. At Chester this weekend, the riders will wear not red jackets, but tight-fitting polo shirts, with their names written on the back.

Each rider will have their own signature tune - from Eye of the Tiger to songs by hip-hop stars such as 50 Cent and Eminem, chosen, apparently, for the ease with which the crowd can sing along.

Jason Harborow, a sports consultant hired by Chester Racecourse to "broaden the appeal" of its show jumping weekend, explains that it "wanted new elements to make the sport more accessible and interesting".

These include rock music being played to signal a clear round (Spandau Ballet's Gold) or a messed-up one (the Style Council's Walls Come Tumbling Down), and a blast from a confetti cannon as each horse enters the arena. It's fair to say it will be a world away from the first race run at Chester in 1539.

There will also be full-scale betting. Where there used to be a small stand for token bets on who would come first, second or third, now there's "matchplay", where two horses race around identical courses at the same time. "

We want to keep the full heritage of the sport," says Harborow, "but present it in a different way. Look at darts - no one used to watch that. Now 10,000 people turn up to the finals." You can see his point: even cricket has been revolutionised by the similarly glitzy Twenty20 format.

Harborow also points out that the sexing up is due less to the sponsors than the broadcasters. This year's event at Chester is being filmed by Sky and, although it hasn't applied any direct pressure, there's clearly an understanding that the event needs to be visually entertaining and accessible to all.

But isn't a photo shoot in knickers a hurdle too far? "All the athletes were happy with it," insists Harborow. "If it makes show jumping more popular then it's a step in the right direction.

" Maria Clayton, of the British Show Jumping Association (BSJA), also defends the photo shoot, if somewhat tetchily: "All of us recognise that controversy is a necessary springboard for change."

I get the feeling that she isn't crazy about the fact that two of her top riders forgot to put their jodhpurs on, but nevertheless wants to make the sport more popular and sees that sex is the only way to do it.

Even royal rider Zara Phillips (an eventer, not a show jumper) recognised this: at a photo shoot for GQ magazine to launch her Olympic bid, she was resplendent in a £740 Hermès jacket and diamond-studded riding crop.

Of course, that other sport involving posh people and horses - polo - has been getting sexier for a while. This year saw the first "Polo on the Beach" event at Sandbanks in Dorset, with an unashamed call for participants to party after the finals and team sponsorship from brands such as Audi and Sunseeker.

The well-known players stayed away, but those who did attend certainly looked like they were having fun, with a white-suited DJ, sunglasses at night and lots of fake tan and cleavage, as well as more of those confetti cannons.

However, it's the Cartier International Polo Day that really showed how democratic the sport has become.

Yes, some of the best players in the world took part and, yes, the Prince of Wales was there in a debonair white jacket. But so were actress and model Kelly Brook, in a floral playsuit, burlesque performer Dita Von Teese, and several thousand non-celebrities. On a blisteringly hot day, the key accessory was a pair of outsized sunglasses (we'll gloss over the three men who briefly wore nothing at all).

Glen Gilmore, captain of the Australian team, is all in favour of appreciating the sexier aspects of the sport. "It's not so much a push by the polo fraternity to make it sexy as to make it accessible," he says. "After all, it can't get any more sexy than a really beautiful boy or girl on an amazing horse - you don't need to sex it up."

Not to boast, but I think I saw it coming first. When I was deputy editor of Country Life, we had to decide whether to mark Katie Price's engagement with the traditional picture on the "Girls and Pearls" page.

This is not as random as it seems, as Price - aka Jordan - has been mad keen on horses since she was a small girl, and still rides regularly. I thought a picture of her looking elegant atop a four-legged beast would be just the thing, but my colleagues vetoed the idea.

More recently, I was amused to discover that my quiet corner of Suffolk is known as "Happy Valley". I had asked about the steady stream of riders that goes past my door and was told that I was at the meeting point of three hunts.

The reason they are all so happy, my informant told me, is that they are notorious for engaging in wife-swapping parties and gossiping about it afterwards. Horses and sex, you see - together forever.